Shakespeare’s Counselor

Chapter Four

When Jack called that night, he sounded weary to the bone. He was following the trail of a sixteen-year-old runaway from Maumelle, a boy from the proverbial good home who’d become caught up in the subculture of drugs and then prostitution. His family hadn’t seen him in a year, Jack told me, yet they kept getting hang-up phone calls from different cities and towns around the South. Convinced their son was on the other end of the phone, sure the boy wanted to come home but was ashamed to ask, this family was getting into seriously shaky financial shape in their search for him.

“How can you keep it up?” I asked Jack, as gently as I could.

“If I don’t look, they’ll hire someone else,” he said. Jack sounded older than thirty-five. “People this driven always do. At least I’ll really try my best to find the boy. Ever since we found Summer Dawn Macklesby, I’m the guy to see for missing kids.”

“Have you even had a glimpse of this kid?”

“Yes.” Jack didn’t sound happy about it. “I saw him last night, in the Mount Vernon area, on Read Street.” Jack was in Baltimore. “He looks awful. Sick.”

“You didn’t get to talk to him?”

“He went off with a man and didn’t come back. I’ll be out there again tonight. I might have to pay him for his time, but I’ll have that talk.”

There was nothing to say.

“How is the surveillance going?” he asked, ready for some good news.

“She won’t bend over. She’s wearing a neck brace and walking with a cane, and any bending she does, she must be doing it where I can’t see her. Maybe Bonnie Crider’s really hurt. It would be nice to find an honest woman.”

“Not a chance. All the warning signs are there. She’s a fraud. We gotta think of a way to catch this woman. Put your mind to it.”

“Okay,” I said. I said it very neutrally, because I am used to taking orders, but I am not used to taking them from Jack. However, I reminded myself in a flattening way, he was my boss now.

“Please,” Jack said suddenly.

“Okay,” I repeated, in a more agreeable tone. “Now I have a thing or two to tell you.”

“Oh?” Jack sounded apprehensive.

“Therapy group was unexpectedly exciting tonight,” I told him.

“Oh, new woman?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“She’d gotten raped in some new way?”

“I don’t know about the rape. She never got a chance to tell us. Someone killed her dead and left her in Tamsin’s office.”

After Jack exclaimed for a minute or two, and made sure I hadn’t been in personal danger, he became practical. “That’s all your group needed, right-a dead woman, on top of dealing with a pack of traumas. Who was she, did anyone know?” Jack was interested in my story, even more so when I told him about the dead woman, Tamsin’s actions, and the new detective, Alicia Stokes.

“I can see why Claude would snap up a woman that qualified, but why in hell would a woman that qualified want to come to Shakespeare?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know anyone on the Cleveland force, but maybe I know someone who does. I might make a few phone calls when I get back.” Jack’s curiosity, which made him such a good detective, could also make him a little uncomfortable to be with from time to time. But in this case, I was just as curious about Stokes as he was.

I tossed and turned that night, seeing the wound in the woman’s chest, the pale body and the red blood. I kept wondering why the body had been arranged in Tamsin’s office. That was sending a message, all right: a woman murdered and displayed in the middle of all those articles about how women could overcome violence and keep themselves safe.

I thought time was overdue for Tamsin to give us a rundown on the stalker that was going to such lengths to terrorize her. After all, now the whole group was involved in Tamsin’s problem, though we had come to her to get rid of our own.

Finally, I got out of bed and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, socks and walking shoes. Jack wasn’t home, and I couldn’t sleep, so it was back to the old pattern. I slipped my cell phone and my keys into my pocket and left my house, making a beeline across the street to the arboretum that filled the whole block opposite mine. Estes Arboretum is one of the town’s less popular bequests, since the land will only belong to Shakespeare as long as it remains in its leafy state. If the trees are cut down for another use, the city loses the land to the nearest living descendant of Harry Estes. Every now and then there’s a flurry of resentment in the local paper about Estes. A group will protest that the city should either sell it or let it revert to the family because the trails through it are not being maintained and the trees are not properly labeled. Then there’ll be a storm of cleaning up across the street, and dead branches and leaves will be carted off and new plaques affixed to the trees. The trails will be edged and new trashcans will be positioned discreetly. An elementary school class or two will visit the arboretum and collect leaves in the fall, and a few women from one of the garden clubs will come to plant some perennials in the spring. Then lovers and druggies will start visiting the park at night, trashcans will be vandalized, signs will disappear, and the whole cycle will begin again.

Right now the arboretum was in the upswing, and the petunias were being pinched back by the women of the Shakespeare Combined Church every week, Sandy McCorkindale among them, I was sure. The paths were free of downed branches and debris, and there weren’t any used condoms decorating the bushes. I went over all the trails quickly and silently.

Suddenly and without warning, my right leg cramped. I hit the cement of the path a lot faster than I wanted to, and I made an awful noise doing it. The pain was intense. I knew if I could get up and stretch the leg I could recover. It was easier to imagine than to do, but I finally managed to push myself to a kneeling position, and from there I lurched to my feet. I almost screamed when I put my right foot to the ground, but within seconds the cramp had lost its hold on me.

I staggered home, my leg weak and aching. My face was covered with sweat and my hands were shaking. When I got into the house, I went to the kitchen and took an Advil. I didn’t know if it would help, but a pain like that would surely leave soreness in its wake. Limping a little, I made my way into the bathroom and washed my face, patting a wet hand along the back of my neck as well.

I was grateful to be back in bed, and stretching the leg out felt so good that I was asleep within minutes of crawling between the sheets.

By the next morning I had almost forgotten about the incident. When I got out of bed to get ready to drive to my surveillance job, the muscle that had cramped was only a faint shadow of discomfort. I wondered if the cramp had anything to do with the approaching onset of my period, which was due any day, judging by my symptoms. I slipped a couple of plastic pouches in my purse to be on the safe side.

Bonnie Crider, the Worker’s Comp. claimant, lived on a busy suburban street in Conway. The ranch-style homes, the small lots, the one-car garages all said “lower middle class.” Crider had been the supervisor of a crew of men whose job consisted of shifting large boxes around a warehouse, more or less. The boxes left, the boxes arrived, but all the boxes were moved to correct areas on forklifts. Crider told the operators what to do, filled out paperwork on each and every transfer, and generally ran the place, except for the hierarchy she answered to. She’d been turned down for a promotion, and her raise hadn’t amounted to what she felt she was due, according to her personnel file. So it had aroused her superior’s suspicions when she’d had an “accident” in the warehouse that had led to unverifiable back and neck injuries. A forklift driver had taken a turn too sharply and bumped Crider with the box he was shifting. She’d been knocked to the hard floor of the warehouse, and the frightened driver had called the ambulance when Crider didn’t scramble right to her feet.

Crider now said she was too hurt to ever work again. She had a sore back, a stiff neck, and severe pain in one shoulder. All these conditions, she said, were chronic.

It would have been pleasant to believe her, but I didn’t.

Even if I hadn’t gotten the job trying to prove that very thing, I still wouldn’t believe her. I had enough time, sitting there in my car, to reflect that this probably said something about me that most people might find unpleasant. So be it.

I’d alternated my car with Jack’s, and now was back to mine. I’d pretended to visit the house for sale, which was on the opposite side of the street; I’d canvassed door-to-door for a nonexistent political candidate; and, I’m sorry to say, no one who was at home called me on that. They were all sufficiently uninformed to accept my assertion that there was a candidate they’d never heard of running for Congress in the district. I’d visited the convenience store, and I’d gotten gas. Bonnie Crider didn’t go out much, and when she did, she stuck doggedly to the collar and cane. She didn’t even go for walks. Hadn’t the woman ever heard of exercise?

Of course, for all I knew, she had a home gym and was in her house now, minus all aids, bench-pressing up a storm.

I hated that idea, but when I thought of snooping closer, I was sure that any pictures I took through her window would not be admissible as court evidence. I would have to ask Jack about that.

After a couple of hours watching, I had expected to be antsy with pent-up energy. Instead, I found myself draggy and melancholy, inclined to think fruitless thoughts about situations beyond my control or affect. I wondered if the woman killed the night before had a big family. I wondered if Janet was all right, and if Tamsin could explain her behavior a little better than she had. I felt like I could take a nap.

Now, where the hell had that come from? Since when did I take a nap, or even think of doing so? I shook my head. I must be getting older. Well, of course I was. But lately I’d been thinking and feeling unlike myself. Was the difference my new living arrangement with Jack, or my new work, or the therapy?

I was doing a lot of new stuff at one time; that was for sure. Maybe all these new patterns and activities were having some kind of cumulative effect. Maybe I was being squeezed through a tube and would come out someone different.

The idea was deeply unsettling. I had perfected living the life I’d framed before I met Jack. Maybe that life had started to alter, to become more involved with the lives around it, even before he’d first come to Shakespeare on a job. But ever since I’d known him, change had become the norm.

I sat and brooded over this low-grade anxiety of mine, rousing myself every now and then to change the position of the car. I was beginning to worry about my mental state when I had a mild revelation. Of course, this was just a variation on PMS! Instead of my ordinary pattern of diminished patience, tender breasts, and backache, I was having all those plus cramps and mood swings.

But this deviation from my own body’s norm was proof that my body was changing, that time was passing.

I finally convinced myself that the sanest response was, “So what?”

Letting myself into my silent house in Shakespeare, I peeled off my sweaty clothes and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later, fluffing up my curls with my fingers, I checked my answering machine. My friend Carrie Thrush’s voice said, “When you come in today, give me a call, please. I know you’re in the middle of learning a new job, but I have a cleaning crisis. Plus, I just want to talk to you.” I wrote her name on the notepad by the phone. The second message was from Melanie. “Hey, I guess I got the right number, that sounded like your voice on the message. Listen, we all need to talk. Give me a call.” She read off her number, hesitated as if she was going to add something, then hung up.

For the first time, I looked at the message counter. Eight. I’d never had so many before.

A smoky voice began, “Ms. Bard, I hope you’re over your shock today. This is Detective Stokes. I need you to come in to make a statement about last night.” Alicia Stokes bit out each word as though it would dissolve her mouth if it weren’t perfectly enunciated.

The next call was from Tamsin, who wanted to reschedule our interrupted therapy session. I had to laugh out loud at that.

Firella had called. And Janet, sounding weak. And Carla. Everyone but Sandy. Her husband had called.

“Lily, this is Joel McCorkindale.” He had a rich, sincere voice that I would have recognized anywhere. “I would like to speak with you about this therapy group you’ve been attending with my wife. I hope you don’t think she broke whatever confidentiality you have to keep with the group; I just recognized you walking in last week when I dropped Sandy off. Please call me back at the church at your earliest convenience.”

I glanced at my watch. It was five-thirty. I looked up the church number and dialed.

He picked up the phone himself. His secretary must have gone home. This must be an important conversation to the Reverend Mr. McCorkindale.

“Lily,” he said with elaborate pleasure, when I identified myself. “I was hoping you could come down here and we could have a talk?”

I thought about it. I’d had my shower, and felt better, though still very tired.

“I guess,” I said reluctantly. “I can be down there in a couple of minutes.”

I put on a little makeup to obscure the dark circles under my eyes, brushed my hair, and set out. Locking my front door behind me, I plodded down the front steps and over to the sidewalk, turning right. Watching my feet carefully because the sidewalk was cracked in many places, I went past the Shakespeare Garden Apartments and then around the corner (the big squared U that went around the arboretum road bearing three names was actually a cul-de-sac) to the parking lot and redbrick buildings of Shakespeare Combined Church. Joel McCorkindale’s office was upstairs over the expanded Sunday School wing, and the day-care program it housed was closed for the day. The gym was busy, judging by the cars parked outside, but it was a separate facility on the other side of the church proper. So the big building was silent when I opened the glass door at the bottom of the stairs.

I plodded up, gripping the handrail, feeling more and more exhausted as I mounted. I didn’t think I’d ever felt as washed-out in my life. I managed to get to the reverend’s office and knock on the door without stopping to rest, but I had to push myself. And it was karate night, too, I groaned to myself. I’d just have to miss.

Joel came to the door to open it and usher me in. It was one of those little courtesies that endeared him to so many of his congregation, especially women.

I sat down in the comfortable chair he indicated, and I was happy to do it. Joel sat in a matching chair a careful distance away-no desk between us for this conversation, another signal-and steepled his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair.

“Lily, I don’t know if you feel you’re getting anything out of this therapy group, but I’m concerned about Sandy.”

“You should probably talk to the counselor about this.”

“I don’t think she would be objective. She’ll maintain Sandy needs her services, no matter what.”

“Now you’ve lost me,” I said, after a pause during which I tried to make sense of his words. I wondered if my mind were going through some sort of trough the way my body seemed to be.

“I have heard, not through idle gossip but through the concerns of members of my flock, that Tamsin Lynd has strong views about the relationships between men, women, and the church. Views that don’t coincide with our interpretation of the Scriptures.”

I would have left then if I hadn’t been too tired to get up.

“And this is my problem… how?”

“I come to you for your… advice.”

“I’m just not understanding you.”

“I understand that y’all know each other.”

I stared at Joel’s smoothly shaved face, his carefully trimmed mustache, and his razor-cut hair. He wore a very good suit, not so expensive that the people of the church would whisper, but nice enough for sure.

“Joel.” He didn’t like me using his first name. I’d always found him distasteful, but fair, and I didn’t want to be as ugly as my first inclination led me to be.

“Joel,” I said again, trying to pick my words carefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Tamsin say one word about any religion in our therapy group.” I took a deep breath. “It seems to me you should be more concerned about your wife’s mental health than about the possible theological opinions of her counselor.”

“Of course, Sandy’s well-being is my primary concern,” Joel said. “I’m just-why does she feel the need to go to this group at all?” he burst out, seeming genuinely puzzled. Suddenly, Joel looked like a real man, not like a little impervious god. “We’ve prayed about it and asked for her healing and her forgiveness of the one who did such a terrible thing to her. Why does she need to talk about it?”

“Because your wife was raped,” I said, as if I was telling him this for the first time. “She needs to talk to other women who’ve lived through the experience. She needs to be able to express her own true feelings about what happened to her, away from people who expect so many different things from her.”

He tilted back in his chair for a moment. At that second, he looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him. I didn’t doubt that Joel McCorkindale loved his wife. I did doubt that he knew what a burden his public persona was on his wife’s shoulders and what a struggle it was for her to preserve the image of the kind of wife she thought he deserved.

“My wife was accosted in college, over twenty years ago, from what little she’s told me,” he said. “Why would she need help now?”

Accosted? He made it sound as unthreatening as a panhandler asking you for spare change-though under some circumstances, that could be pretty damn scary. And I noticed that even Joel didn’t seem to know exactly what had happened to his wife. “Don’t you ever counsel members of your congregation who’ve been raped?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’d be glad to help if someone came to me with that problem, but it hasn’t happened.”

“Then you’re not doing your job,” I said, “in some sense. Because believe me, Reverend, your congregation contains rape victims.”

Joel looked unhappy at the idea, though what caused that unhappiness I couldn’t guess. “How many women are in your group?” he asked, staring at his fingers so evenly matched together in front of him.

“More than me and your wife, I can tell you that,” I said sadly. “And we’re just a fraction. How many women in yours?”

He blinked. Considered. “Two hundred fifty, more or less.”

“Then you have about twenty-five victims,” I told him. “Depending on whose estimates you use.”

He was shocked, no question.

“Now, Joel, I have to leave. I don’t think I was any help to you. But I hope you can be to Sandy, because she definitely has some heavy problems.” I pushed myself to my feet, thinking this had been a waste of time and energy, and I left.

He was still sitting in the chair when I shut the door behind me, and unless I was completely wrong, Joel McCorkindale was deep in thought. Maybe he was praying.

I had more phone calls to return, so I ate a salad and some crackers to get supper out of the way. I was hungrier than I thought I’d be, and it was a little later than I’d planned by the time I called Carrie.

Claude answered the phone and bellowed Carrie’s name. I could hear her telling him she’d be there in a minute, then the sound of water being shut off.

“It’s my night to do the dishes,” she explained. “Listen, the reason I called you, the woman who’s been coming in to clean every day-Kate Henderson-has taken a little sabbatical because her daughter had a baby. So I was wondering… I hate to mix friendship and business, but is there any way you can come in for a few minutes a day until Kate gets back from Ashdown?”

I’d cleaned Carrie’s office until about eighteen months ago, when she’d found her increased patient load called for a daily cleaning, an obligation I couldn’t schedule in at the time. “I’m working in Little Rock this week,” I told her. “But I can come Thursday and Saturday for sure. The other days, I’ll have to see. I may finish up my job in Little Rock pretty soon.” That was probably optimistic thinking, but it was possible.

“I appreciate any time you can give me,” Carrie said. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure. I’ll get there first thing tomorrow morning before you start seeing patients, then I have to go to the Winthrops. But I can come back after you close.”

“So it’ll be clean for Thursday morning and Friday morning, and you’ll come in on Saturday so it’ll be looking good on Monday. Great.” Relief was running high in Carrie’s voice. I heard a rumbling in the background at her house.

“Claude wants to know if Alicia Stokes called you,” Carrie relayed.

“Tell him yes, and I’m just about to call her back.”

“She did,” Carrie called to Claude. “Lily’s returning her call after we hang up.”

“He says good.” Carrie listened to some more rumbling. “He says to tell you Alicia Stokes might be almost as tough as you.”

I could hear from her voice she was smiling. “Tell him, from me, that in that case I’ll be extra careful,” I said.